Use “Transfer Lock”, pay for your domain 10 years at a time, and any time you get a piece of postal mail or an email regarding your domain go to the domain registrar’s website manually and check it out. That covers almost all of the bases. 
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Hmm, perhaps that is possible now–I remember years ago hitting a problem and looking fruitlessly for any way contact a human being at Google. But maybe that was my error–thanks for the correction!
I had the same problem when I was locked out of my Gmail account years ago. I’m glad to know there are options… but of course how many people are using Google One vs plain ol’ Gmail?
This is the trick for me, too. Ultimately there’s always a risk of losing access or control:
- Something can go wrong with your email service provider (e.g., Gmail can lock you out of your account, but the same is true for any other provider); and/or
- Something can go wrong with your domain.
Arguably there’s more risk in relying on a domain provider without a third-party service. In this sense, keeping an @serviceprovider account and using it as a backup email is not a bad idea. (Many places—banks, schools, etc.—will let you provide multiple email addresses for this reason.)
I think the fundamental takeaway from this warning you’ve posted is to put as many layers down as possible so that anything going wrong doesn’t mean you’ve lost it all.
With that in mind, I’d suggest another layer. This may be obvious, but it is worth mentioning: use an email app that downloads your messages so you can refer to them offline.
So many people use the web interface for their email on their desktop. Don’t do that! If you lose access, you can’t pull up the messages anymore. But also, if you lose internet, you can’t pull up your messages anymore.
This is in addition to a good backup strategy, of course. If you have offline email, a good backup strategy will back those up too.
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I recently moved from gmail to Fastmail using my personal domain. In doing so, I setup forwarding from my Gmail account to a folder in Fastmail, then I proceeded to update my email address for all of my important accounts first (banking, insurance, etc.) 1Password actually made this process rather easy by prompting me to update the login associated with each site as I logged in and changed my address. Going forward, as I catch important email coming into the Gmail folder in my Fastmail account, I can go to each site individually and update my email address. That means that the spam / junk mail that has accumulated in Gmail, as a result of my Gmail address being spread across the web for 15 years, can essentially act as a giant spam folder and only the important services get updated. Fastmail also allows you to setup wildcard email addresses, so you can setup distinct email addresses for any online service you use, which allows for more robust rules and has the added benefit of knowing who is selling your data.
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I don’t use the Gmail app, I pull everything into Apple Mail. I presume in that case, if the worst case happened with my Google email accounts, I’d be covered based on your advice. Am I correct?
Yeah, you’ve got it. Mail downloads your files. (They should be downloaded forever, unless I’m mistaken and there’s a preference control for it somewhere… I’m not a big Mail user!)
I imagine Gmail’s mobile app also downloads messages, so my warning is mostly for anyone who relies on the Gmail web interface on desktop machines.
Whatever you’re using, you can its offline abilities by turning on airplane mode then trying to look up an old email.
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Actually, a question that’s right on-topic for this thread (sorry for the double-reply):
I’m playing with the idea of a Fastmail subscription as I explore the different service alternatives (linking that thread again, for your convenience: iCloud Mail, Fastmail, Gmail: what are the differences? The Email Service Feature Comparison Table).
Do folks think it’s better to:
- Create an account (e.g.,
ryanjamurphy\at\fastmail.com) with the service, then add my own domain to that account; or - Create an account with Fastmail with my domain?
I am leaning towards the former, but I don’t know if it matters…
I would start with your email address based on your own domain.
The only reason I say this is that Im pretty sure Fastmail recycles email address using their own domain I.e. Fastmail.com
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Doesn’t look like Spark saves emails locally either, unfortunately.
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If Google locked you out, yes - you’d still have the messages locally.
If Google did something uncool like deleting all your messages on their server, then your local computer would helpfully sync that deletion and clobber your local store as well. 
The good news for me is that I only use Gmail for personal Junk/vendor email. We use Google Enterprise (whatever its current name is) with full backup and archiving so I’m not concerned about losing work email. All of my “real” personal email is with Apple, which I trust more than Google.
And, I always make PDF versions of critical information in emails and store those both in iCloud and encrypted external backup drives as well as with Backblaze.
So, I think I’m covered just as much as reasonably possible. While inconvenient, my life would not end if I lost a bunch of email.
Having my account hacked is another matter all together but I have a unique complex random password for every account I have. Even my device logins are different for each device (MBP, iPad and iPhone).
I use Fastmail, set up an an account then added a couple of domains. Fastmail allows domains or aliases .
I use Mailmate on my Mac and apple mail on iOS all mail is sent using the domain info (you have a choice, usually to reply from receiving account or to set a default.
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@MereCivilian Thanks, good tip. In other words, if I registered ryanjamurphy\at\fastmail.com in the past, then released it, the company might give it to a new user in the future who could impersonate me?
@TheOldDesigner Thanks. I am leaning this way too. It seems more robust to have a service provider email for the account with the service provider, and then add a custom domain to that and send/receive primarily from that custom domain. That way if anything goes wrong with the domain (e.g., I have a problematic tendency to rebrand every few years) I don’t need to keep the domain alive in order to keep the email account.
It probably doesn’t really matter—I’m sure the “main” address attached to the service can be changed or something later on, or the account can be exported and re-imported…
@ryanjamurphy this is my undesrstanding unless it has changed. It seems that you only own that email address as long as you keep paying…Nothing wrong with this policy. after all its a business and it provides one of the best email services I have used.
Full Disclosure: I am no longer a fastmail customer.
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Or you them of course 
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I think I realized decades ago that I needed my own domain. I can put it anywhere so I’m never tied to a specific mail provider. I’m now at my 4th provider using it. And of course I’m not having to change my address because of changing providers.
And perhaps a bit of snobbishness but having my own domain impresses people!
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Good on you for not falling into the trap I did. I also realised I needed my own domain. Decades ago. I’m now on my third domain that I use for primary email.
So to those of you thinking of getting a domain for email, think long and hard about what you will like and want to use 10 years from now. Don’t be me.
Did this happen to your Gmail or a custom domain email (using gmail)? More specifically did this happen to you as a paying customer?
I don’t mean to be rude, but if you read the posts in this discussion, we have discussed and answered both of those questions already.
The first one is answered in the first sentence to the first post in this discussion: It’s about @gmail not your own domain… in fact the entire point of the discussion I started was advocating for getting your own domain.
If you want to pay Google to host your domain, then I would expect that you would (eventually) be able to get someone to talk to you/help you with your problems with it.
Someone else explained that you can even pay for something (called “Google One”, I think?) that makes you a paying customer.
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